The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1887-04-16
THE COMING TELEPHONE.
Why Europe Has Better Telephone Service
than This Country.

Why Europe Has Better Telephone Service
than This Country.
New York Evening Post.
Some days ago the Evening Post reprinted
from the London Times's Paris correspondence
an account of the working of the new Herr tele-
phone, which has been introduced experiment
ally in Paris and Brussels. New York experts
are about evenly divided as the value which this
telephone may have. One of them said yes
terday: ''No 90 far astray in predicting
wonderful things for the telephone, because its
cost price is ridicuiously small compared with
the service it can render even in its present i'm
perfect state, and the cost of maintenance is
scarcely anything. There is nothing extrava-
CANT in the claims made by DR.. Herr for his
telephone, but also. there is nothing very
original in these claims. The telephone
of the future will unquestionably be
a cheaper and far more perfect instru-
it will be used to extraordinary extent not
dreamed of at present is without doubt. The
perfected telephone of 1900 ought not to cost
more than dollar, and telephone service in that
year ought not TO cost more than So year. to
put it at an extravagant,y high figure; telephones
will be as essential in house as gas and water
are now. and they will be used for house service
instead OF speaking tubes and door-bells.
THE great drawbacks to the spread of the tele-
phone at present are its cost and the impossi-
bihty Of making i. work well under all con-
ditions. With the expiration of the patents con-
trolling the invention there will be great COM
petition and corresponding increase in the per-
lection of the instruments offered. Our tele-
phone service in New York is rdculously in
efficient compared to that of Paris, owing chiefly
TO the refusal of the American company to adopt
new devices and the eagerness of American
capitalists to double their money every three
months. What makes it impossible very
often to talk telephones at
all is the induction, the faculty which one wire
charged with electricity has of picking up and
echoing all the sounds passing along other tele-
phone wires in its neighborhood this induction
can be overcome by using two wires instead of
one, which is done in Paris. where the service is
a delight instead of aggravation. Another
defect in our present instrument is the need of a
good transmitter. In Paris the Alder transmitter
is used which is never out of order and gives
remarkable results l have talked in Paris many
times with and certainty absolutely I'M
known in this country and simply because the
lines were properly made, and the instruments
as good science knows how to make them to-
day Here in New York are tour or five
years behind the times. simply because the tele-
phone company will not discard its Blake trans
mitter.
Every inventor, at present. who concerns
himself with telephony, is trying to discover
some means of increasing the sound as it comes
from the phone. Hundreds Of devices have
been tried or less unsuccessfully, but it is
merely question of time when some genius
will stumble upon it, and then the telephone
will be complete apparatus. 1t will then be
necessary simply to listen to it as would
listen to another person talking, with the ad-
vantage of being able to end the conversation at
will by touching spring The distance at
which the telephone can be used to advautag Q
to be increasing daily. and business is
done by telephone between Boston, New
! York and Philadelphia every day.